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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   plastic shape treasure hunt
Friday, August 31 2007
On her walk this morning with Gretchen and Sally, Eleanor rolled in something unspeakable which smelled mostly like puke. As we were hosing her down in the yard, we realized that whatever it was was comprised mostly of tiny golden nuggets of corn. Eleanor must have rolled in the feces of one of the many animals that takes advantage of the enormous corn fields down in the Esopus Valley. Given the amount of feces she'd found to roll in, I'd be willing to bet that the animal responsible had been a bear. Despite our use of soap and lots of water, Eleanor still smelled like a ripe sour cheese many hours later.


Treasure hunts can be great fun no matter how trivial the treasure or how dubious the chance of finding it. Back in Virginia when I was a little kid I used to play in the nearby fields and forest with my neighbor friend Mike True (he was the one other kid in my neighborhood whose parents weren't collecting disability and who didn't need to go to a separate building to take a crap). One day when we were setting off from his house to go play in the stream (Folly Mills Creek, which ran through both his property and mine), his mother suggested that we take pie pans and pan for gold. I remember finding this idea ludicrous, since even then I was aware that the watershed was made entirely of Ordovician and Cambrian limestone and dolomite (remember, my father is a geologist). But I played along and we went off with our pans and panned for gold. We didn't find any of course, but we did find plenty of interesting pebbles, quartz crystals, and snail shells, things I might not have noticed had I not gone looking for gold. Life's essential truth, after all, is that it's all about the journey and (unless you really place a positive value on an eternity in Heaven) the destination is a thing best postponed. (Years later I would learn about the several igneous dikes that traverse the Folly Mills watershed, each of which has the potential to introduce gold and other precious metals into its watershed.)
Today I went out on a similar treasure hunt, though in this case the treasure was highly mundane. I was looking for a piece of plastic appropriately sized to cover the Multiport part of my Compaq Evo N410c. It would be about six and a half inches long by two inches wide and hopefully less than a quarter inch thick. Something narrower than two inches would also be acceptable if I could easily (and cleanly) epoxy it in place.
My first stop today was P&T Surplus on the Rondout in Kingston. There are many treasures there on any given day, and things there are always shockingly affordable. I was gladdened today to see the first LCD monitors available for purchase there, but (since I have no need for any larger than those with a ten inch diagonal) I simply had to note them for future reference. I also saw a number of powerful 240 volt water pumps which could also prove useful at some point in the future (assuming, as with the monitors, that they actually work). The things I actually bought today included a thick piece of cutting board plastic I could machine into a possible Multiport cover, a very cheap Chinese-made hatchet (a large shard of which would splinter off on my first swing at a piece of wood), and a small Netpliance keyboard (I'm a sucker for small keyboards, and this one even has a pizza key, I kid you not). I did not, however, find any plastic pieces matching the paper template I carried in my hand.
Next stop was the Dollar Tree out on 9W. It's a grim place to shop, if only for the obese customers forming thick plaques along the aisles and forcing you on long detours past racks of no-name partyware and dish soap. I found bungee cords (which I wouldn't otherwise know where to buy) which made me happy, but nothing for my treasure hunt.
At Lowes I found a piece of an electrical box that could possibly be used as the basis for a Multiport cover, but otherwise came up empty-handed.
There were better choices at Target, but the best of all was the back clamshell of a cheap 120 volt powerstrip.


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